Syria: Assad regime ready to explore four day truce

The Assad regime is willing to sign up to a four-day truce at the end of this
month if Arab states can convince rebel forces to stop fighting, officials
in Damascus said, in the first sign of a breakthrough in months.

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Mr Brahimi has appealed for support from both Iran, Mr Assad’s only regional ally...Photo: REX FEATURES

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... and Saudi Arabia, which has openly provided assistance to the rebelsPhoto: REUTERS

Offering the slenderest of hopes after 19 months of fighting, the Syrian foreign ministry confirmed it was studying a proposal by Lakhdar Brahimi, the new peace envoy to Syria, to implement a ceasefire over the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday.

Mr Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan after his resignation in August, has been touring the Middle East to win support for his plan, which he hopes can act as a springboard for negotiations between President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels fighting to depose him.

He has appealed for support from both Iran, Mr Assad’s only regional ally, and Saudi Arabia, which has openly provided assistance to the rebels.

“In order to succeed in any initiative, it takes two sides,” Jihad Maqdisi, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.

“The Syrian side is interested in exploring this option and we are looking forward to talking to Mr Brahimi to see what is the position of other influential countries that he has talked to in his tour.

“Will they pressure the armed groups that they host and finance and arm in order to abide by such a ceasefire?”

The prospects of a truce holding seem faint, however. The Syrian government has twice accepted international ceasefire proposals in the past only to see the conflict intensify on both occasions.

Mr Brahimi’s plan is very similar to Mr Annan’s, which saw 300 unarmed observers deployed to Syria earlier this year to monitor a ceasefire that was not observed on either side. The observers were withdrawn in August.

It is unclear who would police a ceasefire if one took hold. Mr Brahimi has denied reports that he is seeking a 3,000-strong peacekeeping force from the United Nations.

Even as it said it was contemplating the ceasefire proposal, the Syrian government stepped up its aerial assault on rebel forces in the north of the country.

Fighter jets launched a series of bombing raids at opposition positions near the town of Maarat al-Numan, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in an effort to recapture a strategic stretch of the Aleppo-Damascus highway seized by rebels last week.

Helicopters also dropped barrels filled with TNT over the town, causing widespread destruction. Photographs of the area indicated that entire buildings had collapsed.

Separately, in a worring sign Syria’s civil war is increasingly becoming a battle divided along sectarian lines, Iraqi Shia militants have infiltrated the Syrian border to support Mr Assad’s troops in the fight against the country’s Sunni insurgency, according to militiamen and Iraqi politicians.

Many are fighters hardened from battling against the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and include members of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army – a group that supporters considered the military muscle of Iraq’s urban Shi’ite Muslims.

“We formed the Abu al-Fadhal al-Abbas brigade that includes 500 Iraqi, Syrian and some other nationalities,” an Iraqi defector from the Mehdi Army who goes by the name of Abu Hajar told the Reuters news agency by satellite telephone from Syria. “When the fighting erupted in our areas, we carried out some joint military operations side by side with the Syrian army to clean up areas seized by rebels.”

As the conflict in Syria becomes ever more bloody and entrenched, Shia and Sunni Muslims from neighboring countries have journeyed to the country to wage ‘jihad’ for their respective sides. Lebanon’s Shi’ite militant group Hizbollah has been accused of supporting Syrian government troops, whilst thousands of Sunni’s have begun fighting with the opposition.